


Strange Arrival AU

by lrhaboggle



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Slender: The Arrival
Genre: AU, But I swear they're both couples in this, Chloe lives in this one, Either way it's lowkey gay, F/F, I'm sorry I didn't have more explicitly gay content, Katen??, Laureate??, Minor shipping, One Kiss, Referenced Romance, Sorry if it seems more like queerbaiting, They're both couples even though it's hardly mentioned, minor but canon shipping, minor mention of romance, pricefield, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 16:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16790989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lrhaboggle/pseuds/lrhaboggle
Summary: Out of the frying pan and into the oven. Chloe and Max had only just escaped Arcadia Bay yesterday and, already, another disaster was brewing on their horizon, only this time, it was no mere tempest they were facing, but the Eldritch Abomination responsible. (Same as my other story, Chloe just gets a bigger role in this version).





	1. After the Storm

"Where do we go from here?" Max sighed as she and Chloe curled up together in their hotel's bedroom.

"I don't know Max," Chloe whispered back. "But I know that wherever it is or whatever it takes us through, I will be with you," she vowed.

"Mmm," Max rolled over to face Chloe, pressing their noses together gently. "I know you will and I love you for it," she murmured.

"I love you too," Chloe replied, then she pressed their lips together gently. For just one small moment, there was a perfect silence between the two as they continued to share this intimate, affectionate moment. They had been through a lot in the past week, but it was all behind them now. At least for a time. No doubt, the consequences would catch up to them in time, but for now, the present was all that mattered and all that existed and they were the only two beings in the whole entire universe...

But the present could not last forever and, right in the middle of their moment, Max's phone went off.

"Urgh!" Max groaned in irritation, reluctantly pulling away from an amused Chloe.

"Who is it?" she asked as Max, reluctantly, broke their kiss.

"It's dad," Max grumbled in reply, peering at the screen through the dark.

"Old Ryan Reynolds?" Chloe quirked an amused eyebrow. Max's father's name might've been Ryan, but that was about all he shared in common with the famous actor, though of course Chloe still took every opportunity she could to call the man as such (strictly behind his back, of course).

"Yes," Max responded, chuckling despite herself. "Old Ryan Reynolds. Though he won't be too pleased you called him old."

"Whatever," Chloe rolled her hazel eyes warmly, but she fell silent as Max answered the call.

"Hey Dad," Max tried not to sound too annoyed as she greeted her father.

"Max? Oh, Maxy, is that you? Thank goodness! Oh, please tell me that you're ok!" Ryan answered, sounding quite worked up. Max knew at once from his voice, and the fact that he was using her childhood nickname, that something wasn't right.

"What? Yeah, Dad, I'm fine! What's wrong?" Max asked, growing nervous. She turned on the speaker so Chloe could listen in too.

"I just saw the news! Arcadia Bay got hit with the most massive storm the country has ever seen! I was just afraid that you had been among the casualties!" Ryan cried frantically.

Max, meanwhile, cringed in response to his words. Looks like the consequences were already catching up to them. Of course, Max had known ahead of time what the price would be if she allowed this storm to strike Arcadia Bay and even though she still did not regret choosing Chloe's life over the storm, she still felt bad about how much the storm had cost the rest of that part of the state.

"Yeah, we're fine Dad. Chloe and I are ok," Max answered, sounding a little subdued as she continued to try and calm her hysterical father down. Chloe looked away, guilt hitting her too as she heard Ryan continue to worry. If not for her, Max could've easily saved the bay and not have had to make such a sacrifice either way. But it was too late to go back now…

"Ok, good! Your mom and I were just so worried! We couldn't bear to lose another-" Ryan cut himself off at once, but it was too late, Max had already heard him. Another?

"Another?" she asked, a dangerous, serious note entering her voice.

"Nothing, sweetheart, nothing," Ryan replied, trying and failing miserably to sound calm.

"No, Dad! Tell me! Tell me now! What do you mean 'lose another'? Who else have we lost?" Max demanded.

"It's nothing, love. Really! We were just thinking about all the others who died!" Ryan was lying through his teeth and Max wasn't going to take it.

"No. Dad! I know you're lying to me. Now tell me what you're talking about!" she ordered, this time with even more force. Tension was filling the tiny, dirty room of the cheap hotel that she and Chloe were staying at and it felt like another storm was brewing. Max continued to argue Ryan down for several minutes before he finally yielded and confessed everything to his persistent, stubborn daughter.

"It's your older cousin, Lauren Caulfield," Ryan began cautiously.

"Go on," Max replied with equal wariness. She and Chloe both heard Ryan take a huge breath in, clearly agonizing on how to start.

"Your cousin, well, went missing. Several days ago, in fact, and there's still nothing about what happened to her," Ryan confessed and his tale only got darker from there. Max and Chloe then spent the next 10 minutes listening to this awful story, bitterly cursing life's cruelty that they should suffer the loss of their entire home only to come across another tragedy so soon after the storm. From one disaster to another.

Apparently, Max's older cousin, Lauren, went missing half a week ago. Two of her best friends, Kate and CR, were also gone. No one even noticed, however, until Lauren failed to return from visiting Kate's house. Max's uncle, Reagan, had finally grown worried enough by his daughter's absence and failure to answer his calls to actively drive up to Kate's mansion in order to figure out why Lauren hadn't returned yet. When he made his arrival to Kate's, nothing short of a horror story was revealed to him. The outside of the house seemed perfectly normal, but going inside revealed what looked like a battlefield. All the furniture was overturned and broken and they and the walls were entirely covered in crazed drawings and eerie, cryptic messages. In addition, half the power was totally out and there was no sign of life at all with the only traces of Lauren and Kate being their cars, parked by the mansion's garage. It was there that Reagan had found CR's car and realized he was missing too.

Instantly after that, Reagan sped home, calling the cops on his way there. Then, while he returned to break the horrible news to his wife, the cops sped up to Kate's house themselves and they wound up discovering everything that Regan had, ultimately declaring that it looked like a robbery and/or abduction even though nothing in the house was missing and there was no DNA found on the premises that did not belong to Kate, Lauren or CR. In short, nothing that anyone found in Kate's house made any sense at all and since there was absolutely not a single clue to be found, no one could even make a guess where the three teens might've suddenly vanished to, or who was responsible or how or why. It was like, after totally trashing the place, they all just vanished into thin air!

But that wasn't what Ryan was calling Max for. Instead, he wanted to make sure nothing had befallen the other Caulfield child and was more than relieved to hear that she and her best friend had survived the massive storm. It had officially been 24 hours since the storm had begun, but due to how intense it had been, although the entire country had been on watch for it, the press hadn't been able to get any coverage until then. By that point, Chloe and Max had just finished a 20-hour drive and were now far away, in a hotel about a state apart, just trying to escape it all.

"Perhaps Lauren and her friends are missing, but we're hunting them ceaselessly," Ryan tried to sound brave. "I just wanted to know you were ok."

"Yeah, Dad. Of course," Max choked out. She loved her cousin dearly and to hear that such a potentially horrific fate had befallen her was awful. And it was made all the more eerie by the fact that it was so mysterious and confusing. Not a clue to be found!

Max felt Chloe touch her arm then and she instantly felt better. She smiled at the blue-haired girl before speaking to Ryan again.

"I'm assuming you're visiting Uncle Reagan?" she asked.

"Yes," Ryan replied.

"Do you want me to come up there?" she asked next.

"No, darling," Ryan murmured sympathetically. "It's too hard for us right now, and none of us want you to have to leave one traumatic event only to step into another, but if you need a place to stay, please just go home to Seattle. Don't come up here to Canada. I've got it covered here. But I'm sure your mom would love to see you. Yes. Why don't you do that? Go home to Seattle, at least put your mother at ease," Ryan suggested finally.

"Ok," Max replied, then she turned to Chloe, asking the silent question of what they should do. Chloe only nodded back to express that she would follow Max no matter what she decided to do. Although this wasn't a very clear or definitive answer, Max saw the loyalty in Chloe's hazel eyes and that was enough to give her the confidence to choose an answer for herself.

"Ok," Max repeated, sounding firmer now. "Chloe and I will go back to Seattle, but you keep us updated on Lauren and you tell us if you need our help up there, ok?" she asked.

"Ok," Ryan agreed. "My brave little girl, everything will be ok in the end," he added, affection clear in his voice.

"I know it will," Max responded, feeling an intense love for both Ryan and Chloe and truly believing her words. "I know it will. Life is strange, but we will survive it," she promise. This earned a smile from Chloe and an agreement from her father. Then after that, he gave one final farewell to his daughter before hanging up, selfishly relieved that even though Lauren was missing, Max was ok.

Max, meanwhile, heaved a sigh as she set her phone down again.

"You think life could also cut us a break," she said. "After the storm, you think it would decide to go easy on us for once!"

"Yeah, but life is also cruel. We can't forget that," Chloe smirked grimly.

"I don't," Max deadpanned back, earning a dark chuckle from her best friend.

"Let's just say we get to bed. We can head out for your mother's tomorrow morning," she suggested.

"Ok," Max agreed, then a peace settled over them once more and despite all that had happened to them after the storm and the call concerning Lauren's fate, Max felt happier than she had felt in almost five years. She snuggled back up to Chloe and Chloe readily took her in her arms.

"Goodnight, my Everyday Hero," the blue-haired girl hummed softly.

"Goodnight, my Faithful Sidekick," Max chuckled back before kissing Chloe lightly, then both were lost to the dreamworld. But their dreams were very different. Chloe would not remember hers in the morning, but Max most definitely would.

Max woke up to find herself in a dark forest. It was full of trees with long black branches that twisted eerily off into a smoggy, starless sky. Papers fluttered around her head in a circle before dispersing out through the endless wood. Max counted eight of them flying off into the foggy night. She took a cautious step forward, feeling that familiar sensation she always got when she was about to use her Time Travel powers. But how was this possible? Max had lost her powers. After the storm, she had no longer been able to reverse the clock as before. It seemed that life had bestowed that gift upon her for a temporary time, to use her as a conduit for the judgment of Arcadia Bay. But with the Bay destroyed and the judgment passed, Max shouldn't have her powers anymore. But being in this forest made her feel like she had them again…

As Max moved past the trees, she noticed one perfect square of pure white paper contrasting sharply with the dirty and dark bark of the gnarled tree upon which the paper was attached to. She reached out to take it, but regretted doing so an instant later because an eerie drum beat that began to echo all around her, though its source was unknown. She shivered with fear before finally taking a closer look at the page she held.

"Always watches, no eyes?" then a screech that sounded human, animal, demonic and digital all at once came from right behind the bewildered girl. But before she even had time to scream, though, she felt something like the darkness itself swarm her entirely and engulf her whole, her scream drowned in her throat as masses of something long and hard, the tree branches perhaps, squeezed her tighter and tighter. The long black masses twisted around her body, slimy and hard things entangling her, holding her down, tying her up, squeezing the breath out of her, crushing, blinding her, binding, tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter! And there was no escape as her life seeped out of her body and into the surrounding night...

"Max! Max! Maxine Caulfield!" Max woke with a violent jerk as she realized Chloe was shaking her.

"What? What? What is it Chloe?!" Max asked, sitting up at once.

"I could ask you the same," Chloe sounded genuinely scared. "I was just sleeping when you sat up and just kept looking around blankly and it was really creepy, but then you started convulsing like you were possessed! It was freaking creepy!" Chloe began to shake and Max noticed herself shaking too. It was clear whatever nightmare Max had suffered had shocked them both.

"I don't know what it was," Max murmured. "I think it was just a nightmare, but it was so real!" she broke off to shake her head in despair while Chloe looked at her nervously, clearly concerned for the sake of her friend.

"It wasn't Arcadia Bay, was it?" she asked, worried that the nightmare might've been a manifestation of Max's guilt.

"No, it wasn't the bay at all," Max said. Chloe almost didn't believe her, but there was a note of awe in Max's voice that showed sincerity.

"Then where were you?" she asked, trusting Max.

"In some kind of weird forest," Max replied, frowning as she retold the dream to Chloe.

"Bizarre," the taller girl murmured. She shook her head, not knowing what to make of this and hoping it wasn't a sign of something else strange that life was prepared to throw at them. Max shook her head in agreement.

"Let's just get back to bed," she pleaded. Chloe seemed wary of this idea, but she knew Max needed the rest, so she carefully lowered herself and Max back onto the sheets, wrapping her arms securely around the shorter, stouter teen. Both of them were pleased to say that the rest of the night was entirely dreamless for both of them. The next day, however, would not yield the same results.

Thrice more in the early morning did Max suffer strange visions, though these were slightly different than the nightmare last night. In these new visions, she was a spectator, watching a haggard woman running through these forests, seemingly evading something unseen yet unspeakably evil and dangerous. Max might not have understood what was happening, but she instinctively knew this was a life or death situation and she only watched in hopeless horror as this innocent girl continued to run through the forest like a hunted animal.

These visions came when Max was taking a morning shower, eating breakfast, and then heading to the car to head out.

"Ok. That's it!" Chloe said at once. Short or not, these mass hallucinations were not safe. "I'm driving!" she said. "You've been freaking out all morning and you are absolutely not getting behind a wheel!" her voice was cold, but Max knew it was out of protectiveness and worry. She had tried, earlier, to protest that she was entirely ok and she even refused to tell Chloe what these visions were showing her, but at this point she knew Chloe was right. She couldn't risk blacking out behind the wheel.

"Ok," she yielded. "You're right," Chloe, however, was surprised at the meekness in Max's voice. Max had never been especially bold, but she was never this terribly meek. Clearly whatever was eating at her was pretty bad and Chloe wished terribly that she could help.

"Hey, if you want, you can drive a little when we get closer to Seattle," she offered, but Max shook her head.

"It would be safer if you drove," she said. "And I promise I'm not saying this out of anger."

"Don't worry," Chloe touched Max's arm. "I know you aren't. I know you'd never do something like that. I trust you."

"Thank you, Chloe," Max replied, voice soft with relief that broke Chloe's heart. But it was true! She would always believe Max.

"Always," she vowed, then she gave Max one more loving look before both of them entered the car and headed out.

Max had several more blackouts on the long drive to Seattle and Chloe saw each of them, but Max still refused to spill any of it and Chloe couldn't risk pulling over or going into interrogation mode. She could only hope that Max would tell her soon so she could know what was wrong. These blackouts were scaring her because the last time she had them this often was with her time travel powers, but even then it wasn't more than maybe a couple a day. Now though? She'd suffered three before they even left the hotel! And then she went through two more on the drive to Seattle that were both frighteningly long! And while Chloe had her eyes on the road, Max had hers on a forest, but both of them were worrying for Max's life. If these hallucinations and visions continued, would there ever be a time when Max failed to wake up?

On the fifth vision, Max found herself in that eerily dark forest again, the broken, beaten, bruised and bloody girl still at her side, limping as fast as she could through the shadows and away from her unseen, dangerous pursuer. Max wished dearly that she could speak with this poor, broken girl, but she knew that the girl would not be able to hear her, so all she could do was plod after her and pray that whatever predator was after her would fail again. And then, right when Max began to wonder about the identity of this young stranger, a particularly harsh beam of moonlight illuminated her face and Max suddenly found herself staring into... her own face! Perhaps it sounded insane, but as sure as Max was Max, so too was this stranger. This girl, running through the haunted forest alone and hunted, was Max...

Max had three more blackouts, but on the third (eighth blackout overall), some answers were finally given to the poor, confused and frightened girl. The dream began the same as always, Max and her presumably future self running through the forest in attempt to escape, but what was different in this one was that now, Future Max almost seemed to be going somewhere specific instead of just darting around the forest at random. And where was she going? To some place called "Kullman Mines". It didn't exactly look like a good place to be, but given what Max had seen in the other visions, she figured that at least the mines couldn't be worse than whatever she was already destined to be running from. So she, silently and obediently, followed her future self into the mines and ran deeper and deeper inside until they were far away from everything else.

That was when this particular vision took a very strange turn. Future Max looked right into the eyes of Present Max and Present Max suddenly realized that this was no future vision. This was a dream! But at the same time, it wasn't just a dream either. It was some kind of special, magic communication between her and this other girl. (Oh, give her a break, stranger things had happened to her before!) Then, at the same time as Max realized this, she realized that the girl was not her future self either. It was her cousin Lauren Caulfield.

Max's jaw dropped in horror as she realized that this brutalized woman standing before her now was living in real-time and that it was her own cousin. It wasn't just some shady future vision of herself, it was actually happening right now and it was happening to her missing cousin who was, for all intents and purposes, still technically missing. It was almost surreal to think that technically, Max knew exactly where Lauren was despite not being involved in the search while those involved, like her dad, mom, aunt and uncle, still hadn't had a clue. But there wasn't time for Max to muse on the irony of that. Clearly, Lauren had something she needed to say, and she didn't have much time to say it.

"Alright Lauren, what is it?" Max asked at once. Her words might've sounded blunt, but her voice indicated the kind of resignation that came with agreeing to do anything somebody said if it meant helping them out. Lauren detected this underlying surrender and gave a bruised, messy smile in relief, tense body loosing just slightly, causing blood to gush from some of her wounds as her body changed its position. She took Max's willingness as consent to skip long intros and she began to explain right away.

"I don't have a lot of time so you'll have to save your questions and I need you to believe every word I say," she said.

"Go," Max replied. Lauren gave her another relieved smile and she then explained.

Nobody was sure when His arrival was, but speculation said that He had come from Germany. Or more specifically, a large forest in Germany, where He had preyed upon all the children who were foolish enough to travel into His realm. For centuries, He spread this evil influence across the globe before managing to reach the place right around where Kate lived. After that, He began to haunt the entire family, stalking them from generation to generation until he finally attacked one particular family of three, the Mathesons: Charles, Diane and Charlie Jr. He kidnapped the son which drove the wife to leave the husband, never to return, which drove the husband to suicide. From then on, He and the boy remained as master and slave in a nearby forest that would someday become Oakside Park. The boy was imprisoned within his own, abandoned home, a cruel torture from a cruel and nightmarish monster of a master.

Charlie and his evil master stayed that way for years before one foolish girl reopened the curse. That girl was Kate. She was a good girl, but she loved ghost stories and those stories would bring about her demise. She and her best friend, CR, often hunted Oakside Park for ghosts and, on one specific trip, they finally found a ghost. They found Him. From then on, from high school through college, He stalked them both and made their lives a living Hell. In the end, CR suffered Charles' fate while Kate suffered Charlie's, and all of this transpired a mere few hours before Lauren stepped onto the scene, finally uncovering all of these secrets that had been hidden so well for so long. She had taken it upon herself, then, to try and rescue her two friends, but she arrived far too late. CR was dead and Kate was nothing but a mindless proxy, slave to this horrible creature. And now that brought everyone back to the present, Lauren still desperately on the run from Kate and this creature, still trying to find her way out of this nightmarish forest and back home.

"You, Max! You are my ticket out of here!" Lauren cried at last, almost delirious at this point. She gestured psychotically to Max, giving an insane little laugh as she did so. Max could only stare agape. Ok. She was used to strange and weird, but this was freaking insane. But at the same time, Max couldn't deny her belief in Lauren's story. Mad and fantastical as it was, it all added up. Without even meaning to, Max found herself believing every single word Lauren said. Lauren could sense this belief from Max and the relief of it was starting to tug at her sanity.

"I know about your time travel powers," Lauren continued desperately. "And I'm begging you to come out here and use them to save me! We can try to escape the forest together and, maybe, you can use your powers to find us a safe path out of here! And if anything goes wrong, you can just use your powers to bring us back to safety! It'll be like a checkpoint in a videogame!" Lauren gave another unhinged laugh again while Max could only stare, mouth moving, but no sound escaping. At last, however, she was finally able to form a coherent sentence.

"But Lauren," she finally began, voice hoarse. "This isn't a videogame..." Ok, so perhaps that wasn't the best reply, but it was all she had while the rest of her brain tried to understand this crazy nightmare scenario that Lauren was presenting to her.

"I know it's not! But your powers can help it act like one!" Lauren cried frantically as she sensed Max's waning belief.

"But my powers… They don't work anymore. And how could you possibly know about them?" Max pleaded next.

"They may not work now, but it's only because they're in an inactive state! Your powers were only the result of a curse. All we need is for you to return to the magical source for your powers to return and I know this because they're from Him!" Lauren wailed. "Please believe me!"

"Him?" Max gasped. Lauren nodded so hard that Max thought her head would fall off.

"Over the past few days, I've been doing research!" Lauren hissed desperately. "I know that after that foolish family summoned Him over, He began to stalk their bloodlines, killing them off one by one, but always leaving at least one person alive in order to propagate the rest of the family."

"And I'm guessing Kate is a descendant of this line?" Max asked.

"Yes!" Lauren began to nod frantically again. "That was why He took her! And now me, being in the crossfire, makes me another potential food source, and that includes you too because you're my cousin!"

"But that's insane!" Max cried in denial, though she believed every word Lauren was saying.

"It's not!" Lauren argued, close to hysteria. "I know exactly what happened because I found it all here in the books and junk scattered around this evil forest! How else would that be possible if it weren't true?"

"What do you mean you know everything that happened?" Max pressed, almost as hysterical.

"I know about you and Chloe and the time travel and all the mysteries and murders you solved!" Lauren cried. Max felt her heart begin to pound as Lauren reeled off exactly what Max had been up to after all this time. It was terrifying to hear it because it was all totally accurate. Lauren was able to correctly recall every time travel adventure that Max, and Chloe, had ever had together. That shouldn't have been possible... But it was!

"I know about the storm and your final choice and about your powers seeming to die after the storm!" Lauren finished in a last attempt at getting Max to believe her. An agonized look crossed Max's face at the memory, but Lauren ignored it. "It was all because of Him! He was testing and tormenting you and now I'm asking you now to come to me! I want you to save me and help me put an end to all of this! Before he ends you! We can bring your powers back just this once and you can save me! Maybe we can even make Him pay for what He did. To Kate and Arcadia Bay and all of us!" Lauren's sanity was clearly slipping again so Max quickly reached out to touch her face.

"Ok, ok, ok! Shhhh! I believe you! I really do! And of course I'll come help! But you've got to tell me how exactly and you've got to give me at least a bit of time to… adjust to all of this," Max pleaded as she gripped Lauren's face hard. Something in Max's agreement and tough grip brought Lauren back from her little slip and she shut her mouth at once, nodding and fighting hard against totally losing it.

"Ok, ok, thank you," Lauren rasped, shaking violently but growing quiet again. "Here's what you need to do…"

Lauren finished her instruction just in time to see His arrival into the Kullman Mines.

"He's here!" Lauren rasped, horror and terror unlike anything Max had ever known seeping into every inch of her body. Suddenly, Lauren was cowering and wild, breath as ragged as her body and clothes. It was an awful transformation, but Max could only watch.

"Oh, please! Come quickly, Max! Now you know what to do! Come find me! Find me, Max!" then the dream went dark.

Max and Chloe arrived at Max's mother's house an hour later and enjoyed a relatively happy evening, but Lauren's brutalized face was forever in the back of Max's mind and even though her night was dreamless, she could feel Lauren's spirit still pleading with her to come and save her as soon as she could. It was a restless and burning demand that Max could not ignore, try as she may. Then at last, the worry for Lauren and desire to do something grew so strong within Max that she finally made a decision...

"You want to go to Canada?" Max's mother, Vanessa, asked in confusion. "But you only just got here like three days ago!"

"I know, Mom" Max tried to speak calmly. "But I think Dad and Uncle Reagan could really use the help and you can't leave because of your job."

"You're right," Vanessa murmured unhappily. "You are the best person to go north, but I just don't want you to."

"I know you don't," Max continued to speak gently. "But I have to, please?" Max continued to plead gently with her mom, masking the true urgency she felt about getting this request granted. At last, though, her patience paid off and Vanessa agreed.

"When will you leave?" she asked as she finally gave Max her blessing to go to Canada.

"ASAP," Max replied grimly. Vanessa's frown deepened, but her consent didn't waver. Instead, she only had one last question.

"Will Chloe be joining?" she asked. Max turned to her best friend.

"Of course," Chloe answered for herself, knowing that Max's reluctant look meant she was about to deny. Like Chloe would let her do that! Ha! The blue-haired girl had been trying to get an answer about those visions out of Max for the past three days now and there was no way Chloe was just going to let her run off now without telling her about what the heck was going on!

So, it was settled, Max and Chloe would leave for Canada ASAP. Vanessa even managed to find them plane tickets that very day!

"Your seats will be the worst on the plane, but it was all I could get at such a short notice for such a low price," Vanessa said.

"Don't worry Mom, it's perfect!" Max said, fighting not to dance for joy and give away the fact that she wasn't going up north to see her father.

A few hours later, it was time.

"Call as soon as you get there!" Vanessa requested as she dropped Max and Chloe off at the airport.

"Of course!" Max replied, then with one last quick farewell, Max bolted to the plane with a semi-confused Chloe in her wake.

"So why are we really going to Canada?" she asked Max as soon as they sat down. "And don't you dare say it's just for your dad and uncle, because I can see it in your eyes it's for something far bigger!" the blue-haired girl accused quickly. Max cringed. Sometimes Chloe's perceptiveness sucked. But there was no more getting out of answering the question so Max reluctantly explained her dreams. Although she hadn't had a single blackout since the eighth one on the drive to Seattle, Lauren's terrorized and begging face had yet to leave Max's memory, and that was just as bad as any of those creepy and chilling blackouts had been.

"Are you mad?!" Chloe screamed, disturbing their whole section of the plane. "You got a deluded dream about Lauren in a forest and your first plan is to actually check it out?! I mean, even if it were true, wouldn't logic tell you to get help first?"

"No!" Max said quickly, trying to hush her shouting friend. "I believe the dream because it feels like the ones I used to get when I still had my power, and those dreams were never wrong. Besides, it's got to be true, because what Lauren said made sense! And in regards to help, who would believe me? Who would say yes? Besides, I think that if I tried to get real help, it would only make things worse…" Max broke off with a worried frown. "If you don't want to help, it's ok. I think this is going to be far worse than the whole Arcadia Bay thing, and I don't want to drag you into it just because you feel obligated. You can just stay with my dad while I-"

"Now I know you're insane!" Chloe groaned. "As if I'd let you do anything, especially if it was dumb, without me!" then despite the disbelief upon her face, Max saw Chloe give her a real smile that promised true loyalty and, not for the first time, did Max feel tears of gratitude prick her eyes. Chloe hadn't been bluffing when she told Vanessa she'd come along to support Max.

"Thanks, Chloe," she whispered.

"Always," Chloe replied, then the pair spent the rest of the flight planning…


	2. Into the Forest

Max called Vanessa as soon as they touched down in Canada, and then she managed to stop her mother from calling Ryan and Reagan to tell them that Max and Chloe were coming. Instead, she lied and said that they already knew who was coming over.

"You don't need to worry," Max said, lying through her teeth. "I've already called Dad and now I'm calling you."

"Ok, sweetheart, I just wanted to make sure!" Vanessa said, completely oblivious to Max's painfully obvious lie.

"Don't worry, Mom!" Max repeated, fighting hard to control her urgency. "Can I call you later? I have to find Dad..."

"Oh! Yes! Of course! I'm sorry! Call you later?" Vanessa asked innocently.

"Sure, sure, sure thing, Mom," Max muttered quickly, then she ended the call before Vanessa could say anything else, silently hoping that her mother wouldn't be too alarmed by how brief that call had been.

As soon as her phone was back in her pocket, Max turned to Chloe, who hadn't said a single word since leaving the plane. The moment Max opened her mouth, however, Chloe cut her off.

"Buy a rental car, drive to Kate's, explore, dream, go to the forest," the blue-haired girl said at once. Max shut her mouth again, genuinely impressed. Chloe, however, only shrugged. "We're best friends, remember? I know everything you do!" in reply, Max grinned sheepishly.

"Ah, right. I forgot," she confessed.

"And how could you possibly forget that?" Chloe chuckled, pretending to roll her eyes in despair. Meanwhile, Max's sheepish smile only increased as she allowed her blue-haired friend to drag her through the airport and into the area where they sold rental cars.

A few hours later, just as the afternoon began to fade into evening, the couple reached Kate's mansion. It was blocked off by police tape, but there were no police to be found. Max let out a silent sigh of relief. The cops were probably back at HQ, talking to her dad and uncle, or maybe they were actively hunting the forest where the three teens might've been. But either way, Max was just glad to see that they weren't here, at least. She had more snooping to do and she was pretty sure it wouldn't fly with the cops and she wasn't really in the mood to try and explain her way into Kate's house. But upon seeing that the house was empty, Max and Chloe approached confidently, pushing past the wall surrounding the house and the front door to explore. They didn't know what they were looking for, but they were sure they'd find it here.

As Max and Chloe entered Kate's house, Max gave a grim smile while Chloe cussed softly, disturbed. It was just as violent and chaotic as Ryan had said. It almost looked like a massive storm had been through it… Max shook her head and strode in bravely, ignoring the flickering lights and insane drawings that covered every overturned piece of furniture throughout the house. Chloe continued to swear in shock and fear as she cowered behind Max, not wanting to go deeper into this nightmare house, but not wanting to be left alone either. Max, meanwhile, focused on reaching Kate's room, knowing exactly where it was despite having not hung out with Kate since middle school. Then, as Max and Chloe entered Kate's room, the window broken and pictures and words lining every wall just like Lauren described, Max felt herself grow woozy.

"Right on time," she whispered with morbid satisfaction, then she blacked out.

When next Max woke, it was morning and she was still alive and in one piece.

"Thank goodness!" Chloe cried at once. "When you fainted and never woke up, you really freaked me out!" it was clear that Chloe had been crying at one point, probably terrified that she had lost Max. Her only consolation was that Max's pulse and breathing never faltered, so even though she had fainted and refused to wake, she never seemed in danger of dying. It had taken all of Chloe's willpower not to call for help, though, instead of trusting Max and her dreams. But it seemed the gamble had paid off, because Max was back and even though it was early dawn, she seemed ready.

"I know where we need to go and how to get there," she said, and neither she nor Chloe wasted any time in heading in that direction, into the forest.

Max and Chloe reached the Kullman Mines by midday, entirely undisturbed. They almost began to disbelieve Lauren's story and they began to wonder if it hadn't all been mass hallucination brought about by grief. But Max's father's story about the three missing teenagers in Oakside Park, coupled with the strange sensation that there was always somebody watching despite being invisible, made it impossible for either girl to ever truly let her guard down, even though the day had been very lovely and quiet. Even the mines looked nice in the warm, gentle sun.

But the moment Max and Chloe set one foot inside those mines, it was like entering a whole new world and both could already smell and taste the lingering fear of all the others who had come here before them. Now the two knew for sure that this was no wild goose chase, but instead, was a very cruel and unfortunate reality. But the duo pressed onward, despite the fear that they were starting to feel crawl up their spines. Max figured that if Lauren trusted this place, so could she, and Chloe figured that if Max trusted this place, so could she. Besides, the vision Max had received last night (or really early morning, depending on how you looked at it) had been Lauren telling her to go to the mines ASAP and wait until she made her arrival. So now Max was here, in the spot where she and Lauren had agreed upon meeting...

After an indefinite amount of time, Max heard Lauren call out to her from somewhere over her head. She looked up and felt her heart jump in the same direction. There, on a catwalk right over her head, stood her cousin, Lauren Caulfield, just as battered, bruised and maimed as she had been in all of the visions that she and Max had shared. Max's heart ached for her. Chloe whistled in shock and a bit of disgust at Lauren's sad state.

"Lauren!" Max cried. Lauren only smiled down at her before racing from the catwalk to reach her and Chloe.

"You came!" she whispered in relieved awe as she grabbed Max for a hug. "You really actually came!" she began to weep as she embraced Max.

"Of course I did!" Max replied softly, returning the hug. Then both girls began to cry in relief and sorrow while Chloe only watched awkwardly. Although she knew Lauren and was on friendly terms with her, they weren't close enough to be friends, so Chloe almost felt like a third wheel as she watched Lauren and Max hugging it out.

Once the tears dried, however, they all returned at once to the more pressing matters at hand.  
"It's 2:00 pm and we're finally together," Lauren said at once.

"2:00?" Chloe echoed in surprise. "Last I checked it was only 1:00."

"Sorry I kept you waiting," Lauren replied with a sheepish grin. "But I had to do my rounds in case He was anywhere nearby. But I think we should be safe for now, at least for awhile," she promised.

"Don't worry," Max replied. "I'm not afraid. Let's just use what time we have wisely."

"Of course," Lauren nodded, the she leaned in close to Max and whispered her plan.

It was pretty much just like what she had told Max before, only now they were actually going to get Max's powers back.

"Using this talisman, you should be able to use it almost unlimitedly," Lauren said, giving Max a tiny necklace whose gem looked like an hourglass. How fitting. Max put it on shyly. "I've already activated it too, so just give it a shot and rewind time," Lauren requested and Max obeyed, inhaling slowly as the familiar sensation returned to her...

"It's 2:00 pm and we're finally together," Lauren said at once. Max smiled grimly in reply.

So with her powers back and a plan in order, all the remained was for the Caulfield cousins and Chloe to set their plan into action and start making their escape. But of course, life was never quite so simple. First off, Max had to stay alive and keep the talisman on herself at all times. It turned out that talisman's true form was actually the spell itself. The very capability to control time had somehow been manifested in a little necklace. And whenever this capability was cast, something like a ghostly orb would rise up from the speaker and take shape into whatever the speaker desired. It was upon hearing this that Max figured that the previous spell-user had turned the Time Travel Talent into a camera, hence why Max had been able to time travel through her photos. The only difference this time, aside from her new talisman being a necklace instead of a camera, was that this necklace had a wider capacity for time travel. With the camera, the rules had been very strict and specific. Max had to use the photos and could only travel backwards by about 10 minutes. With this necklace, she could go back up to almost an hour, though it would drain her energy far worse than the camera ever had and the camera hadn't exactly been the easiest of objects to use in the first place...

"It's ok," Lauren reassured when Max confessed to being unsure about how well her own strength would hold up using the necklace. "Just as long as you have the power, that's all that really matters!"

"Then why didn't you use it?" Max asked in reply, genuinely curious as to why Lauren had needed her here at all.

"Because you know it better," Lauren answered. "You've had more practice using this kind of power and, thusly, have had more experience and more time to build up more stamina. Even if it has been a few months, remember that I've never controlled time for a day in my life, so even you have a better grasp and stamina for it than I do," she explained and Max had to agree that she had a point.

Besides, it made more logical sense to have one person out of two act as a Time Keeper instead of having one person do both jobs just because there was strength in numbers (even if that number was only two), and that way, if anything were to happen, that would give the Time Keeper time to go back. If there had only been one person, that person would have to play the role of a distractor and a Time Keeper both. Not quite as easy as just having a friend who could reverse time while you distracted whatever danger was headed your way. If only Lauren controlled time, the full burden of using it before being killed would be on her. So Max was placated and allowed herself to use the power once again.

"So what do we do now?" Max asked as she allowed herself to accept her new role as a Time Keeper again.

"We start the journey," Lauren replied, then she led her younger cousin out of the mines and back into the forest...

"I've never walked this far at one time," Lauren commented some time during the journey.

"Really?" Max asked in surprise and Lauren's face darkened.

"He's incredibly persistent," she said and Max asked no more, choosing instead to focus on the path ahead.

"He?" Chloe echoed. Lauren gave her a grim nod but said nothing and though Chloe frowned, she pressed no more. Max, herself, though curious, also didn't want to ask because she somehow knew the answer wouldn't be pretty at all.

At last, however, the girls reached their first trial.

"What's that sound?" it was Lauren who noticed first.

"Sound?" Max echoed, stepping closer to her older cousin. Chloe also stepped closer, protecting Max's exposed side so Max was stuck between the two taller, older teens.

"It sounds like…like…like feet!" Lauren whispered. She took Max's arm. "Come on, let's go," she insisted.

"You don't need to tell me twice," Max replied, following after Lauren at once with Chloe bringing up the rear. But that proved to be a terrible mistake. The moment their backs were turned to the sound, a guttural howl sounded off and the girls whipped back around in terror. What jumped from the shadows of the trees was something awful. It was a person, a boy perhaps, that was slightly smaller than average. He wore a torn up tee that was so bloody it was hard to see what it's old color used to be. It wore a mask through which you could only see some dirty, spiky brown hair and maniacal eyes that seemed to glow like the moon. It was Lauren who was first to break from her trace and shout one simple word: RUN.

As the Caulfield cousins and Chloe sprinted through the trees, Lauren whipped out a cylindrical object.

"What is it?!" Max hollered as they ran.

"Flashlight!" Lauren replied, then she whipped around and turned it on. Even though it was still midday and, thusly, sunny out, the light from the flashlight was concentrated enough that when it hit the monster's face, he cried out in surprise and pain and stumbled. The fall would give them enough time to escape! Lauren gave a triumphant cry which Max and Chloe echoed. When they chanced a look back and saw the monster on the ground, they cheered again and pressed on faster than before, encouraged by their little triumph.

Awhile later, though, the exhausted girls stopped sprinting long enough to catch their breath. They were in another part of the forest now, too far west, but all of them were too tired to care.

"Whew!" Chloe cried, sweating and panting like a dog as she dropped down. Lauren and Max mimicked her, but were a lot less dramatic in their motions. "Glad we got away from whatever that was."

"Proxy," Lauren replied through gasps, swallowing painfully.

"What-sy?" Chloe asked.

"Proxy," Lauren repeated, then she explained. A proxy was His slave, turned by His magic and forced to do His will. "I don't know if proxies are under His full control or if there is still some of them left inside the body He took from them, but I do know that they are forces to be avoided at all costs," Lauren was still panting as she spoke.

"Ok. Proxy is bad," Chloe was heaving too. "Got it."

Then after she caught her breath, Chloe asked another question.

"Do you think you could also explain who He is?" she asked. "You keep making allusions to Him, but I still don't even know what He is."

"It's not safe to talk about Him," Lauren replied and Chloe knew at once she had asked a forbidden question, but such taboos never stopped her before, so she turned to Max instead, tilting her head, but Max only shook her own.

"I only had 1 dream about Him, but I couldn't describe Him to you," she said.

"You dreamt about Him?" Lauren turned to Max, horrified.

"Once," Max replied self-consciously. "And it was only for a moment!"

"What happened?" Lauren demanded. Max explained meekly and when she finished, both Chloe and Lauren were scowling.

"That's exactly what He would do!" Lauren growled.

"I'll kill Him for it!" Chloe agreed. Neither Max nor Lauren decided to tell Chloe what an impossible feat that would be.

"Come on," Lauren said after growling softly about Him for a little while more. "We need to go," she flicked her head. Chloe gave a groan but she stood up anyway, dusting off her jeans. Then she obediently followed Lauren and Max away from the little clearing and back into the woods. But this part of the walk was calm and they made it all the way to the next waypoint without trouble.

"Alright, I know there's a safe spot here," Lauren murmured as they reached the waypoint, then she limped towards a nearby cabin. Max followed carefully after, heart wrenching slightly as she saw how unsteady Lauren's gait was. Clearly, the older girl was far more beaten down and weary than she was letting on. Max approached her cousin gently and offered an arm. Lauren looked at her in surprise, at first, before smiling and taking Max's offered aid with affectionate eyes. It had been so long since Lauren had felt this safe or happy, and from what she saw when she looked into Max's eyes, she could see that the feeling was mutual.

"Thanks," she said, leaning carefully on Max.

"No problem," Max replied, wrapping her arm carefully around Lauren's bloodied back. Had she been whipped? "I'm sorry you had to go through all of this," she said as she touched the wounds.

"They were only tree branches," Lauren replied casually in reference to her wounds, but then her face darkened. "But I agree, I'm sorry I had to go through all of this too," she said, scowling.

"I'm so sorry about Kate," Max offered.

"So am I," Lauren echoed, but then her face softened again, though now there seemed to be pity laced within. "I'm sorry about Arcadia Bay."

"So am I," Max joked, feeling her eyes mist over. Despite complaining about Arcadia almost all the time, Max really would miss the place…

"But I'm not," Chloe interjected gruffly in attempt to lighten the mood. It only served to increase Max's unhappiness because she knew it was a lie. Perhaps Chloe hated the bay, but she felt just as bad about destroying it as Max…

"But it doesn't matter now either way," Chloe added when she didn't receive the laughter she'd hoped for. "The bay is dead but Kate is not, so Kate is all we care about anymore."

"Agreed," Lauren frowned.

"Wait a sec," now Max interjected. "Is Kate really still alive? I thought you were only trying to escape?"

"In a sense," Lauren replied vaguely. Max looked at her curiously. "Proxy."

"Oh," Max instantly felt bad for asking.

"Doesn't matter," Lauren replied, looking away. At once, Max wanted to admonish her cousin, but she knew her cousin was only saying this to cope with the loss. Max did the same thing after the storm, insisting that it had been too useless and ugly of a town for so many tears to be warranted. But it hadn't helped. Max was sure it wasn't helping Lauren either. But the trio moved on in silence, no judgment being cast.

At last, the trio was inside the cabin and sitting upon the beds, the doors and windows sealed shut.

"It may not do much, but it does make me feel safer," Lauren said as she shut the last window.

"Well, at least it'll keep wild animals out," Max offered. She was sharing her bed with Chloe.

"True," Lauren replied. "Now are you hungry? I've got a small stash here from a vending machine just a few cabins over."

"No, I actually brought food," Max replied, showing off her backpack.

"Clever girl!" Chloe remarked. "I totally didn't think of that!" Lauren's eyes widened as she saw the contents.

"Oh! Chocolate!" she sighed, a hungry look in her eyes.

"Take it," Max replied with a smile. Lauren met her eyes uncertainly, but Max only pushed the bag forward, so Lauren took it gratefully and ate.

"All the other food here is stale, old cakes and chips," Lauren confessed. Max chuckled softly, then she grabbed a chocolate bar for herself after passing one to Chloe and the trio ate their unhealthy yet delicious snack in contended silence.

But in time, the peaceful little meal had to come to an end.

"We need to keep going," Lauren insisted as she finished off her third chocolate bar.

"But where to?" Chloe asked. "You made it sound like we'd be hunted, but so far I haven't seen or heard anything."

"Be grateful," Lauren replied grimly, then her face contorted into horror. "Speak of the literal Devil!" she gasped. Max and Chloe quickly whipped around and though they almost missed it, there was a moment they saw an impossibly tall and thin man with a face as white and empty as a full moon. Long black tentacles slicked out from a suited back as he tilted his head in their direction before vanishing like a dream.

"The thing in my dreams!" Max gasped.

"What?" Lauren and Chloe both turned to her and Max remembered that she had forgotten to mention that her very first dream about this place didn't have Lauren in it. Instead, it had only been that tall man and her. She obliged to tell her two companions about that first dream then.

"Oh that's scary," Lauren stuttered and shook. "It means he'd already started hunting you even before I tried to. Did he somehow figure out my plan?" Lauren began to fret and mutter to herself, wondering how it was possible that Slenderman had gotten a jump on her contact with Max. "He either read my mind, already knew what was going to happen, or it was luck I happened to call you a day after he did because I certainly didn't send that first dream to you," Lauren paused to shudder again while Max, herself, began to shake. It was horrific to think that thing that had just been outside had been targeting her for awhile. Chloe, meanwhile, shook her head in disgust.

"This is insane!" she declared. "But I swear that punk is gonna pay if he thinks he can hurt us!"

"I wouldn't say that if I were you," Lauren warned, suddenly looking around as though she feared he would appear in the cabin itself.

"Why? Can't take a challenge?" Chloe taunted. Max tried to hush her, but Chloe continued to scorn the monster.

"No, we can't take the challenge!" Lauren replied crossly, but before any of them could speak again, a sudden wind kicked in and sent the three girls scrambling from the cabin in fear. Once again, they were charging through a dark, deadly forest while unarmed and hunted. No more nice cabin beds or sweet treats, only fear and urgency unmatched. So, back into the forest it was!

But as the trio ran through the forest, trouble came after. They hadn't gotten very far when a proxy stopped them dead in their tracks.

"Kate!" Lauren was first to cry out when she saw the proxy standing there menacingly in the distance.

"Kate?!" Max and Chloe echoed in disbelief, but the look of pain written on Lauren's face made it clear that this was indeed her long-lost friend.

"She's seen better days!" Chloe remarked. Lauren shot her a death glare that Max copied. Chloe only raised her hands in surrender. "Just making an observation!" she defended half-heartedly. Lauren looked about ready to slap her, but before she could, Max spoke up.

"What is she even doing?" asked Max, confused as to why Kate was only watching them.

"She's waiting for us to make the first move," Lauren said. This was another tactic Kate had started using on Lauren ever since Lauren realized who she was. It was a mental torture because Lauren knew it was Kate's way of making her hit first, something she didn't want to do. At last, however, Lauren plucked up the courage to act and she picked up a rock near her foot and threw it. It missed Kate by a longshot, but still got a reaction from her. A very angry reaction.

"AAARGGHHH!" Kate responded as the stone landed about a foot away from her, then she lunged at the trio.

"Whoa! Crap!" Chloe swore as Kate pushed Lauren several feet back before whipping around to face her.

"Chloe!" Max reached out to the blue-haired girl as she jumped back to avoid being hit.

"Hey, Time Lord?" Chloe responded back, ducking this time. Max quickly understood and she kept her arm reached out, but this time she imagined it was the fabric of time that she was trying to touch, not Chloe.

"She's waiting for us to make the first move," Lauren said.

"Then can we wait her out?" asked Max before Lauren could cast the first stone.

"No. She will literally just wait for us to move because, unlike us, she has nothing to fear if she doesn't move," Lauren replied ruefully.

"Then let's hit her!" Chloe insisted.

"We can't!" Max interrupted. Lauren agreed with this, scowling at Chloe for her suggestion.

"Why, because she's a friend?" Chloe scoffed.

"No. Because we die if we do," Max responded and the two others understood at once.

"So what can we do?" Chloe asked, somber now.

"We can back up slowly," Max suggested and they tried, but then for every step they took back, Kate took one forward.

"Urgh!" Chloe swore, both afraid and infuriated by Kate's little mind games.

"Wait! The trees!" Lauren interrupted. When Chloe gave her a look, Lauren explained quickly. "We can climb up one backwards!" she said. "Once up, we should be ok because even though Kate can climb, we'll have the high ground!"

"Just like Star Wars?" asked Chloe with a hint of irony. Lauren shot her another look, but Max ignored them both. Instead, she began to climb up a tree, but the moment she did so, Kate roared. This silenced the other two.

"Wait a moment!" Max insisted. She looked at her companions. "Quick! Each of you get your own tree!"

"Are you mad?!" Chloe cried in terror.

"Maybe!" Max admitted. "But maybe if we each get our own tree, she won't know who to go after first."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure she will!" Lauren laughed humorlessly, but before Max could ask what that meant, Kate lunged. Right towards Lauren.

"LAUREN!" Max and Chloe both cried out to her as Kate began to ravish her. The two girls were able to overpower the proxy, but just barely, and Lauren suffered some pretty fierce injuries from the attack.

"Hold still!" Chloe cried angrily as Kate continued to thrash. Chloe held one of her arms in a death grip.

"Like that'll do an good!" Max retorted as she held onto Kate's other arm. Then she carefully activated her time powers again.

"Wait! The trees!" Lauren interrupted. When Chloe gave her a look, Lauren explained quickly. "We can climb up one backwards!" she said. "Once up, we should be ok because even though Kate can climb, we'll have the high ground!"

"That won't work!" Max argued right before Chloe could make her Star Wars joke.

"How do you know?" Lauren demanded, but then she realized her answer at once. "Wait, never mind," she amended. "What do we do instead?"

"She'll go after you first," Max replied. "I don't know what we should do, but I do know what'll happen if we try your plan!"

"Of course!" Lauren muttered. "She'd go after me first. I wonder, though, does she know me?" Lauren trailed off, then she took a step toward Kate.

"What are you doing?!" Chloe snapped, but Max hushed her at once, watching instead as Lauren took several more steps forward, gently cooing to Kate the whole time. Her words were almost unintelligible, but Max could sense that she was onto something…

By some miracle, it worked. Max had her time powers ready and waiting, but the longer Lauren cooed at Kate, the less feral she got...

"Lauren?" a weak, cracked voice emerged from the proxy and Chloe's jaw nearly fell off in surprise, but Max only smiled grimly.

"Kate!" she and Lauren both murmured in relief and while Lauren quickly took Kate in for a hug.

"How?" was all Chloe could ask, shaking her head in amazement while Lauren nuzzled Kate fiercely, Kate responding in kind.

A few minutes later, Kate was somewhat sane again, and she had managed to explain roughly what happened. Apparently, she and CR had endured the wrath of this monster, Slenderman, for many years and, on the night the two of them went missing, CR committed suicide. Kate had chickened out and was taken instead, turned into a proxy called Chaser, and set in the Kullman Mines to wait for Lauren's arrival.

"I was supposed to kill you when you came looking for me because He knew you would, but even when you got here, I was able to fight Him off some. Didn't you ever wonder why I never killed you when I attacked? He wanted me to, but I never did!" the proxy explained.

"Oh, Kate!" Lauren's heart went out to the girl as she finally realized just how much Kate had suffered to keep her safe. Alongside keeping this trauma a secret for years, Kate had resisted hurting Lauren even after her brutal transformation into a Slenderman slave. Lauren felt her heart physically swell with affection for her old best friend.

Once the story was over, though, Kate turned to Max.

"And you! Max! Thank you so much for coming to save us!" her gray eyes pierced Max's brown ones and Max couldn't help but look away.

"I couldn't just leave my cousin," she mumbled and Lauren touched her arm appreciatively.

"What about me?" Chloe pretended to be hurt.

"You too, Chloe," Kate agreed. "You're a hero too!" but Chloe had not expected such genuine thanks and she looked away shyly as well.

"But now that we have you back, what do we do?" Lauren pleaded. "How do we get out of here?"

"Well, that'll require us to take a little trip to the Matheson Farm," Kate replied. "Are you with me?"

"Are we?" Chloe asked in agreement.

"We don't have another choice," Max replied and Chloe's shoulders slumped, but she followed after the others regardless.


	3. A Dark History

On the way back, Max wound up using her powers three times. Once when they took a wrong path that got them lost, and then another when a proxy jumped them halfway to the farm and then a third when Slenderman himself began to mess with them directly, teleporting them all around the forest in attempt to split them up. All three times, Max was able to get everybody back ok but each time, her power dwindled a bit more.

"Take it easy," Chloe insisted gently as Max stumbled. They had been walking for quite awhile and Max was still a bit drained for her recent recall, the one where Slenderman had personally begun to torment the group.

"Easier said than done!" Max snorted back, but she let Chloe support her the same way Lauren and Kate were helping each other walk along.

Then at last, the group reached the Matheson family farm.

"What do we do here?" asked Chloe as they entered the decrepit property, surveying the charred remains of the Matheson house.

"There's a spell book in here," Kate answered, nodding her head towards the barn behind the house.

"What?! Are we here to play Harry Potter?" Chloe snorted. "I mean, I suppose we already have our Time Turner, but-"

"Chloe!" Max warned.

"What?" Chloe shrugged innocently.

"Actually, if anything, you're right," Kate agreed, surprising the other girls. "Only this time, our spell book is going to try and send a demon back to Hell!" she added and then the picture became upsettingly clear.

"So we have to break into a haunted house to use a haunted book in a haunted room to return a haunted demon to his haunted home?" Chloe asked skeptically once Kate finished explaining the plan. Kate nodded and Chloe gave a mad laugh, but she knew at once that Kate was dead serious. There was no joke or prank involved and, as far as any of them knew, this was the only way to escape the forest.

"Why, oh why, did I ever agree to do this?" the blue-haired girl asked once it sunk in that Kate's plan was the only one they had, but then she saw Max's face fall and she instantly felt guilty. "But then again, I'm glad I'm here," she amended.

"Don't lie," Max replied sadly.

"I'm not," promised Chloe. "I would be just as miserable if you left me out of this adventure."

"Don't be too sure of that!" Lauren muttered grimly. Chloe looked at her uncomfortably before gesturing to the farm.

"Shall we just go in?" she tried. That, at least, was something they could all agree on.

But the inside of the farm house was far from pretty. Instead, it was very old, ugly and burnt and devoid of all life, including plant life.

"They say the original owner, Charles, burnt it down when Slenderman took his son, Charlie," Lauren murmured, thinking of the Homestead tape she had seen during her initial hunt for Kate.

"He did," Kate responded. "His son still lives here, though, so watch out!" but Kate had barely said this when the son himself appeared.

"Eeew!" Chloe shrieked when he came near. She began to cuss as he skittered closer. Lauren drew out her flashlight. Kate stopped them all, however, kneeling before the mutilated boy and grunting and signing to him. Although the conversation was impossible to translate, the others somehow knew that Kate was trying to get this kid to see that they weren't dangerous. It took awhile, but it did finally work and Charlie yielded. He grunted and gestured for them to enter, but he followed them closely, sunken eye-holes watching their every move as they explored his home.

"Creepy kid, isn't he?" Chloe growled as she felt his eyeless sockets piercing into her back.

"Can you blame him?" asked Lauren, though she understood where Chloe was coming from. His intense gaze was disturbing, to say the least.

"Yes," Chloe responded, dead serious as she continued to feel him watching her closely.

"Chloe!" Max sighed, but Chloe only shrugged defiantly and continued to help search the house.

"What are we looking for?" she asked again after about 20 minutes of nothing but exploration of the world's worst haunted mansion.

"The spell book," Kate answered.

"And you know it's here?" Chloe asked.

"It has to be!" Kate replied.

"And how exactly do you know this?" asked Lauren, genuinely curious.

"Because I've done my research," Kate replied humorlessly. "Turns out that Oakside has a dark past, a very dark one, intertwined with Slenderman himself!" then the proxy obliged to explain.

Apparently, it hadn't been sheer luck alone that brought Slenderman from Germany to Canada. It had been one particularly foolish family, a family ancestral to the Mathesons. That ancestor family had, for some reason or other, thought it would be good fun to summon up Slenderman and, after performing something of a Satanic ritual, they managed to bring the demon straight to their own backyard where, from that day on and across many generations, the monster stalked them. He tormented and killed them continually, one by one, only leaving one heir alive each generation to propagate the next.

Charlie had been the last until Kate came along. Then, through Kate came Lauren and, through Lauren came Max, and through Max came Chloe. But that was how Kate knew about the spell book. She knew about what a dark history her bloodline had in relation to Slenderman and it was her firm belief that the same spell book that the Matheson ancestors used to call Slenderman here was not only still in existence here, but could also be used to send him back. They just had to find it first, before he found them!

"Wonderful," Chloe's lip curled up and she stopped looking. Max threw her another despairing look before she joined her cousin and cousin's friend in their search once more. Chloe, meanwhile, took a more defensive stance, acting as the bodyguard for the group.

At last, though, the blue-haired girl found something that broke her concentration.

"It's a map of the Bay!" she breathed, and so it was. It was a perfectly drawn map of Arcadia Bay, despite it looking at least a century old. But what frightened Chloe more than a map like this in a place like this was the writing on it. She could see a bunch of scribbles in the sea that she knew was meant to represent the storm. The one that hit Arcadia Bay. But how-?

"What did you find?" Max asked, coming back to see what it was that Chloe had discovered.

"Jeeze Max!" Chloe gasped, jumping up in surprise. Max backed up apologetically while Chloe tried to get her pulse under control.

"Sorry," the smaller girl said. Chloe only shook her head in disbelief, touching her chest to signal that Max had nearly killed her with that accidental, unintentional jumpscare. Max gave her another sheepish grin before turning her attention to the thing that Chloe was looking at.

Max's reaction to the map was pretty much the same as Chloe's, but she found something else that Chloe missed. Under the map was a family tree. To be more specific, it tied the family responsible for summoning Slenderman all the way down to Kate's line, a dotted line connecting her to Lauren which connected to Max which, with a dotted line, connected to Chloe. It was just like Kate had said, a dark history of Slenderman's victims' bloodlines. But even creepier was, again, how old this map was. Even back then, though, Slenderman had somehow known that Kate, Lauren, Max and Chloe would all come into existence to carry on this evil legacy. They had to find that spell book soon!

"It's like a stalker's paradise!" Max muttered as she scanned the map and tree. Chloe peered over the girl's shoulder to look at the family tree and shuddered in agreement. The sound of squeaking floorboard ended their talk, however, and they scurried off to find their Oakside counterparts.

Lauren and Kate were far deeper into the house, trying to find the spell book.

"Where is it?!" Lauren sighed in frustration. "How much time do we have before Slenderman comes?"

"Who can say?" Kate responded twice, once to each of Lauren's questions.

"I just want to get you out of here!" Lauren despaired. "Is that too much to ask?" Kate, meanwhile, was touched.

"I still never thanked you for coming to save me," she said in attempt to cheer the brunette up.

"You don't need to," Lauren replied. "I'd do anything for you!" then the pair shared the tiniest of kisses but it was enough to calm them both.

Chloe and Max arrived just after Lauren and Kate broke apart.

"Find anything?" Max asked hopefully. Lauren instantly jumped back a little, having not expected for Max to just pop up like that. Then she intentionally turned away from her younger cousin to hide the fact that she was blushing. Having Max walk in on her kissing Kate wasn't something she was very proud of, even though she had far bigger issues to worry about than her little cousin seeing her kiss a girl.

"No," Kate sighed regretfully, having totally missed Lauren's minor embarrassment about being walked in on.

"Dang it!" Chloe cursed.

"Did you?" Lauren tried, though Chloe's word choice made the answer clear. Sure, the map and the family tree had been interesting, but it didn't really give much information about anything that could directly defeat Slenderman.

"Can't we ask Charlie?" Max asked next.

"I tried," Kate answered. "But he refuses to help. He's too scared and he has no idea where to look."

"Dang it!" Chloe repeated, but with nothing else to do, the group continued to search some more.

At last, however, they found it. Back towards the Matheson Chapel, in stairs that led to the underground, the quartet found a book.

"That's got to be it!" Chloe cried as she pointed to the big black tome, corners of musty old paper sticking out from the leather cover. "Right?"

"I don't know. It seems too easy…" Lauren murmured as carefully picked the book up, inspecting every wrinkled corner before opening it up. A cloud of dust puffed up from the ancient and smelly pages, but before anyone could even cough, a new voice joined in the conversation.

"That's because it is!" a shrill voice hissed up at them and all four of them went sprinting back up the stairs in pure terror. Once they turned around again, though, they saw an ugly, deformed face smiling up at them from the stairs.

"Ticci Toby!" Kate sounded panicked and, judging by Toby's mutilated and stab-happy face, nobody could blame her.

"That's right!" Toby giggled as he reached the top of the stairs. "And as you said, Slenderman already knew of your plan and knew you were coming here, so I suggest you make it easy on yourself and come quietly!"

"As if!" Chloe tried to be brave, pushing herself in front of Max.

"Oh. You," Toby sounded horribly bored. "You're that little punk who thinks she's so great! But it cost the entire Bay just to keep you alive."

"How do you know that?!" Chloe growled through her teeth, guilt coursing through her body.

"Because my master was the one who created that storm. Duh!" Toby cackled.

"What?" Max and Chloe both choked out. Although they had already heard Lauren talk about how Slenderman was the one responsible for giving Max her Time Turner Talent and although they had just gotten through examining a map that foretold the massive storm that would strike Arcadia Bay, to hear someone verbalize this crazy concept that it was all the fault of Slenderman's was something else.

"Uh huh!" Toby sounded far too happy about all this and he practically sang out his taunting reply to the two girls from the bay. Just as implied and theorized, Slenderman had known about Chloe and Max thought Lauren and Kate and had, thusly, made them part of his long list of victims. In order to lure them out to Oakside, however, he had indeed been the one threatening the Bay with the storm, and all so he could grant Max the reality warping powers that would introduce her to his realm of dark magic. It, ultimately, didn't matter what choice Max made because, in the end, she would've survived regardless, and that was all that ever mattered. Just so long as she lived so that she could come to save Lauren and, through that, fall deeper into Slenderman's web was all that mattered. Whether or not Chloe or the Bay survived had been collateral, in Slenderman's mind. It wasn't Chloe or the Bay he had wanted, it was Max, and now, he had her. Unwittingly, she had played right into his tentacles from the very first time she tried to reverse the clock.

And what was the proof? Well, along with Slenderman being an eldritch abomination that was more than capable of pulling off such a complicated task, it would explain why Max had been having eerie premonitions even before coming to Arcadia Bay with her Time Travel Talent in tow, and it would also explain why everything else, including that inexplicably large, powerful and yet somehow very precise storm, had struck, and all within about the same timeframe as CR, Kate and Lauren's disappearances. That timing hadn't been dumb luck, it had been Slenderman's intentional manipulation. Just like everything else in their lives in that past few years.

It was then that Max began to wonder if it had been Slenderman himself that had gotten her accepted into Blackwell Academy in the first place. Such manipulation like that certainly wouldn't be impossible for a godlike monster such as himself. Max shuddered at the thought. She hadn't realized what a dark history she and the bay had had with this literal demon.

"So now that you know how intelligent my master really is, allow me to try again!" Toby sung. "Surrender or die!"

"Go screw yourself!" Chloe responded, anger having boiled up the longer Toby had talked about tormenting Max and the Bay. Then she threw a loose piece of rock from the chapel steps and hit Toby's eyes. Big mistake. He lunged up at Chloe and hacked at her with an axe hidden behind his back. The blue-haired girl screamed in panic and agony as the cold metal bit into her flesh, tearing chunks away from her body and causing little geysers of red to erupt from wherever the axe sank into her flesh and bone.

"CHLOE!" Max screamed, using her powers at once.

"So now that you know how intelligent my master really is, allow me to try again!" Toby sung. "Surrender or die!"

"But why?!" Max interrupted before Chloe could make her fatal error. "Surely you can't be any happier here!"

"Sure I am!" Toby protested. "I was a nobody back at home but here, I'm a king!" Toby began to tell Max all about his great life in Oakside.

"But Toby, Slenderman is only using you," Lauren chimed in, seeing what Max was trying to get through Toby's thick skull.

"Like I wasn't used everywhere else too!" Toby snapped. "At least here I have some power, respect and fun! I never had that at home!"

"But come with us!" Lauren cried. "And we can help you be happy! We won't need to resort to meaningless promises!" both she and Max continued to try and talk Toby to sanity, but it didn't work and, ultimately, it only angered Toby into attacking again. Although the girls had good feelings toward Toby, their insistence that he give up this happy life full of blood and domination threatened him and he was going to defend the life that he saw as his own. This time, though, somebody far worse than Max or even Toby stepped into save the day. Slenderman himself.

All at once, the four girls were on their knees, screaming and crying, lost in their own pain as Slenderman hissed into their minds. It was the worst of psychological tortures, to feel his essence literally sliding around their heads and filling up their bodies. It was like a sort of violation, leading them to feel more vulnerable and exposed than ever before and it was a disgusting, degrading feeling. Slenderman relished their pain and discomfort as his conscious mind seeped into their own, taunting them with word and hallucination.

"What are you girls doing?" he asked in a cold, cruel, mocking voice that sounded like a knife grating on a headstone and a hissing snake all at once. "Are you really trying to defeat me? Oh, Kate! You've lost your game! Now I must tell you that you shall either surrender, or die!" he began to laugh, a maddening sound that was nothing but an echo of madness, shaking the very foundation of the old abandoned chapel in which this confrontation was taking place. It was the sound of pure evil and Kate's scream suddenly became incredibly high pitched and Lauren remembered the night all of this began. How evil was Slenderman that his very laugh was agony on the mind and ears, capable of bringing an adult woman to her knees, screaming louder than a wounded animal?

Meanwhile, Max was trying to clear her mind in attempt to reverse time. She was trying to force Slenderman out of her head just long enough so that she could actually focus on herself instead of his omnipresent, omniscient, overbearing, soul crushing voice. It seemed to be everywhere at once, while also being stuck in her own mind. It was cruel, and total, like a death sentence you could never have pardoned. Just as she felt Slenderman's tentacles slide out across her back, she managed to make the jump and rewind the clock. She fought hard to get him out just long enough to find one corner of her mind where she could take back a measure of control. At long last, she did it. Right as she felt Slenderman's thick, slimy tentacle creep across her back and up her spine to curl crushingly around her neck, everything went fuzzy, and then in reverse.

"Can't we ask Charlie?" Max found herself asking.

"I tried," Kate answered. "But he refuses to help. He's too scared and he has no idea where to look."

"Dang it!" Chloe repeated, but before the group continued to search some more, Max spoke up once more as memories flooded back to her.

"I know where the spell book is, but we're going to have proxy named Ticci Toby waiting for us there!" she said.

"What?" the others looked at her incredulously but, at the same time, they believed her in full. Or at least, Chloe and Lauren did. Kate, who had no clue about Max's time powers, did have to be filled in, but after Max was able to prove that her powers were real by listing off a lot of the traits that Ticci Toby possessed, Kate knew that at least some of her words had to be true. How else would she know about a proxy that, to this Kate, she had never met yet? So, after a bit of convincing, Kate began to believe what Max said about her ability to warp time.

"So you say he's there below the chapel?" Kate clarified. "With the spell book used to bring Slenderman over centuries ago?"

"Yes," Max replied.

"Then that's where we need to go!" Kate decided.

"But if Toby-" Chloe interrupted.

"We'll distract him!" Kate interrupted Chloe's interruption. "Listen! We can pretend to be looking above the chapel and, when we draw Toby out, somebody can sneak down there and grab the book!" it was a crazy idea, but it just might work.

Sure enough, it actually succeeded, and the quartet was able to bring Toby up from the basement area. They all pretended to spread out and search when, in reality, they were waiting for the ugly proxy to show his axe-crazy face. They didn't have to wait for long.

"Why if it ain't the old Chaser? What are you doing associating with these losers, my friend?!" the boy cackled. Then, while he confronted Kate and Lauren, Max was the one to quickly and quietly slip down the stairs and grab the book. She tried to read it, but the lack of light and the fact that it was written all in runes made it impossible, so she instead ran back upstairs. When she emerged, Chloe helped Max out and hid Max and the book in her shirt. At the same time, Toby was still taunting Kate.

"Well what you seek is not out here, I promise you that!" Toby was in the middle of saying.

"Of course not," Lauren muttered, though she was being dead serious as she watched Max emerge from the basement, hands on her stomach.

"It's not!" Toby insisted. "You've lost the game, so just quit now while you still can!"

"Funny, we were going to say the same thing to you!" Kate grinned, then she gestured to where Max stood. Just as Toby turned in confusion, Chloe ran up to him and sucker punched him. Kate mirrored the action and, with her proxy strength, in no time flat, Toby was out cold.

"Now what?!" Chloe panted in excitement as Max got the book out from under her shirt.

"We need to set everything up and perform the spell," Kate answered, taking the book, but her face fell as she opened the book.

"What?" asked Lauren, seeing Kate's face fall.

"I can't read it!" Kate despaired. The others made similar noises. Had they come so far only to lose now? Wait a moment…

"Do you think Charlie could?" asked Max.

"I don't know," Kate looked uncertainly at the girl.

"Well, it's worth the shot!" Lauren tried. The four exchanged looks before nodding, quickly darting out of the chapel in time to see Charlie sitting there, watching them motionlessly from the field.

Five minutes and two rewinds later, Max and friends managed to say just the right things to get Charlie to agree to help them out. He lumbered after them into his family's old chapel and helped set up the ritual circle where Slenderman would be returned. He took the book from Kate, eyeing her almost-perfect form enviously. Though she had been proxified, she still looked pretty human. Charlie, on the other hand, looked only like a zombie, a tiny blue skeleton. But the boy turned to the spell book, setting his envy aside, and he began to read. Charlie had since realized that decades of being stuck with only Slenderman for company would do some weird stuff to your psyche and force you to learn how to do junk you'd never learn about otherwise. Reading ancient German tomes was one of those things. It helped pass the time.

But of course, halfway through the readings, Slenderman would arrive.

"Oh, shoot!" Chloe screamed as he teleported right outside the door. It appeared that he couldn't cross the threshold, but his tentacles certainly could. They snaked into the old building and wrapped themselves around anything they could find. It took awhile, but at last, almost everybody had been caught. Except for Max. But with one look at her, they all knew this predicament would reverse itself soon.

"Wait!" Max insisted once the dizziness stopped. "We need to bar the door first!"

"Why?" the others asked, all of them in the middle of creating the ritual circle again for the spell.

"Because of what Slenderman will do when he hears Charlie doing the spell!" Max responded. Nobody asked anymore questions after that, instead blocking the doors and windows with whatever they could find in the chapel. But even this was not enough. Charlie was able to finish the spell, but when the portal at their feet opened up and Slenderman was dragged into it, he managed to almost drag Lauren and Chloe down with him and it was only Max's speed that kept her from falling too and she reversed the clock as fast as she could. But this time, she reversed it a bit further back.

"Now that we have the doors barricaded, there's something I need everybody to know!" Max cried.

"What?" the others cried impatiently, Charlie grunted and tapped the book with a bony finger.

"I know!" Max told him. "It's just that, when Slenderman gets sucked in our little portal, he's going to try to drag us down with him, so we need to hide in the basement while we do this."

"But one of us has to be here in the circle to speak the spell!" Kate cried and the group looked amongst themselves for a willing sacrifice. At last, though, Charlie volunteered. He looked angry and scared about it, but he resolutely raised his arm.

"I do it," he warbled at the girls.

"What? Charlie! No! You're only a boy!" Kate and Lauren protested and even Chloe looked uncomfortable at the idea of killing a child, but Charlie himself was totally set in his ways.

"Am not!" Charlie argued. "I am man!" and nothing would change his mind.

"You brave boy, you," Max murmured to him, then she led herself and the other girls down into the basement while Charlie finished the spell, sitting alone in that little ritual circle as the chapel got ever darker and colder.

Once it was all over and once the rumbling and screaming stopped, the girls crept up from the basement and saw… nothing. The whole chapel was empty. No circle, no proxies (Charlie and Toby both), no Slenderman, no spell book. Nothing but an alter and a few pews and the dim light of dawn poking through what remained of the stained-glass windows. So it worked. It really, really worked. It was over. They were free…

It took the survivors a good while to comprehend what had happened and, even after it all sank in that the nightmare was truly over, they could only lie on the floor in awe. It wasn't until the sun was high in the sky that they managed to limp their way from the Matheson Farm and back towards the exit of Oakside Park where the rising sun awaited them all.

"The gates are open!" Lauren murmured, trembling.

"They are!" Kate breathed in realization, then she and Lauren began to stagger towards them while Max and Chloe exchanged a glance before following them outside.

Once they passed the gates, they looked down the hillside to see a group of cops waiting for them. Lauren and Max's fathers were amongst the cops, jaws dropped at the sight of their daughters and their daughters' friends coming over the rise, looking like they'd just been through a war.

"This should be fun to explain," Chloe murmured and Max managed a chuckle, but deep inside, neither she nor Chloe really cared how crazy things were going to be for the next while. The nightmare was over and that was all that mattered. All of them had lived to escape and if they could handle Slenderman, they could handle all the fallout of what would come next. So as the cops began to call out to them, picking up radios and pointing up at them, the teens all shared exhausted grins with each other before making their strange arrival back home, away from Oakside and its dark history and into the light of a new and, hopefully better, future.

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Just an AU where Chloe lives. I only wrote this because I feel like I didn't give Chloe enough time in the original fic, though you can tell this is a mere re-write of the last fic because there's a lot of repeated scenes and it's shorter overall, some things being a bit glossed over. That being said, if there was anything confusing or contradictory in this story, tell me in a review so I can address it. Thanks!


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